


Lost in the Night

by crowbarwolf



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Autoerotic Asphyxiation, F/M, Pre - A Dance With Dragons, Pre-Relationship, Spoilers for A Feast For Crows, canonverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-20
Updated: 2013-06-20
Packaged: 2017-12-15 13:34:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/850121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowbarwolf/pseuds/crowbarwolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short trip down the street of Braavos is what he has promised, yes. It's not Aegon's fault that he fell into the sea and drowned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lost in the Night

**Author's Note:**

> everything that needs to be said is already in the tags, i hope. this is canonverse so obviously, spoilers for both affc and adwd. if you haven't read the books and don't want to be spoiled, this is your out.

-

"It's just a brothel, Jon. Everyone agrees that I am old enough to be having sex with the fairer sex. Or the same sex." Aegon says.

Behind him, Duck laughs around the rim of his ale, a horrible choking thing that makes the nearest men snicker in amusement. Connington does not share the same amusement as his crews do. Aegon doesn't think he has any sense of amusement whatsoever.

"Let the lad have his fun for a night, boss," Duck quips, after he's regained his breath. "I'll take him around, show him the wonders that Braavos has to offer."

"You just want to visit the brothel houses yourselves, you bastard," someone shoots back – Aegon cares not who, he is too busy making eyes at the stone-faced Connington.

"It will be just a while," he tries again. "I'll be very good, I promise. I won't cause any trouble and I'll be back by sunrise. I just wanna know, Father, you have to let me –"

"Fine," Connington cuts him off. The old man cards a hand through his hair, closing his eyes as he pinches the bridge of his nose; a tired resigned gesture Aegon has learned over the years that means he has won the argument. "Just for a while. You'll be back by sunrise. Is that to be understood?" at Aegon's excited nod, the man looks more pained.

"Don't make me regret this," he threatens, and Aegon quickly answers, "You won't."

They depart not fifteen minutes after and Connington is already regretting his decision.

-

It's not hard to get Duck away from his tail.

"The best whores are at the Happy Port, down by where the mummers' Ship is moored." The girl who sells oysters had informed them with practiced ease. "Ask for Merry. Meralyn is her true name, but everyone calls her Merry, and she is." Duck had laughed, and the girl had added, her face a mask of innocence, "That and the biggest pair of teats in all of Braavos."

She was nearly as tall of him, lithe in a way that most Braavosi street-rats are, her face plain and easy to forget. Aegon had given her a few coins for her information and she had offered them some oysters in return. "We need not of it, little girl," Aegon told her. "The coins are gift for your knowledge."

"Don't call me little girl," the girl had spoken to him. "My name is Cat." Then she slipped away from them, swift as a dancer, chanting her magic words, _'Oysters, clams, and cockles.'_

As soon as they entered the Happy Port, Duck had been whisked away by more than two women and Aegon had been whisked away by more than five. "What a pair of beautiful eyes," one girl cooed in Braavos. "I shall like to ride him while looking at those eyes," another girl agreed. 

Aegon had laughed and let them ushered him into one of the rooms upstairs, Duck's words following him closely, "Go get 'em lil' dragon!" even though Aegon had no interest in any of the whores. Maybe later, but not now. He came here with _purposes_ after all.

"Much as I would really love to have fun with you ladies," Aegon purrs, in perfect Braavosi, when they are alone – him with five other women, by the gods – completely out of sight. "This is not what I came for."

He then proceeds to tell his intention; of wanting to see the street of Braavos on his own, of challenging other men with swords strapped to their hips, of walking down the river to see the moonlit courtesans in their glory.

The whores coo at him, fluttering their eyelashes and smiling, and tell him all they know of Braavos. Within fifteen minutes Aegon has gathered all the information he needs, and he is out of the window in a flash with the ladies waving their silken colourful scarves down at him. "Travel safely, young dragon!" they are saying.

By midnight Aegon has bested two men in a sword fight. He has the bruise on his back and the open slashed wound alongside his right arm to prove it, said right arm which he is currently stitching close right now with what equipment he has by the sea.

The current is strong and the water is brilliant under the light of the moon; it sparkles silver and white and metallic, bits of diamonds catching his reflections, and Aegon inhales the salty air through his nostrils and thinks of home.

Seven Kingdoms, from what he has heard, is a place full of corruptions and treacheries and conflicts. Not all is well ever since the death of Eddard Stark – the lord of House Stark, the one of which played a big part in the downfall of his house, the Targaryen Dynasty – war raging on every corner of the kingdom.

Dreadful stories, all that he's heard, but some bore truths nonetheless. If he is given the chance to choose, Aegon would like to have a life like this, one that is full of adventures and hard work and meeting people all over the cities. 

The life of a sellsword, he muses, is not the life he's had in mind. But after hearing of Duck's stories, the people he's worked for, the women he's fallen in and out of love with; Aegon can't find it in himself to be anything _but_.

He wants it, he realises. He wants fine cheese and good wine and old leather-cased books in seven different languages acquired with money he makes by himself after finishing a job with his sword.

He wants willing women on his temporary bed and a horse galloping from one city to another in search for a job. He wants information and tales of the free cities and a story of his own, one that he can tell his children when he is ready, or his wife even if she disapproves.

Knighthood is something he has considered to be, once, a child's dream nothing more, but from the way some Southern women from the Seven Kingdoms talk of knights like they are some disgusting hypocrite of nature, Aegon dismisses the idea as fast as Jon Connington decides someone is unworthy of his attention, moving on.

Just as he is about to finish with his stitches, there is a sharp thumping noise behind him, the scrap of blade against rock-solid ground and hard heavy boot-clad footsteps more than once.

Aegon turns in time for someone, a man in worn ugly red hood, swings some sort of a metal-based object against the side of his skull, a solid punch that makes his head dizzy, white stars sparkling beneath his eyelids in a sea of black.

_Connington is going to be so angry,_ is the first thing that crosses his mind as he falls, and he is drowning and drowning and _drowning_ until his lungs are burning and there's nothing but silence in his ears.

-

When he finally wakes up, surprisingly not drowning at the pit of a bottomless sea, there is a glass of warm milk and a plate of bread and cheese on the ground next to his head.

Above him there is a small lit candle, the orange glow of the flickering fire making it easier for him to see: bricks between bricks of _bricks_ ; a long endless wall with curving roof of bricks.

Droplets of water are dripping down the material of his breeches, more water to be found in the small spaces to his right. He doesn't know where he is or if he is still alive, but the raging pain in his head as he tries to sit up convinces him that he is, in fact, alive.

The stitches alongside his right arm has been fixed, much better than his own, and there is something sticky and cold, like a balm of sorts, precisely on the bruise on his back. It is also the same time he realises that his body is cold all over, not just from the balm, but the lack of clothes hanging about his frame.

Aegon immediately reaches for his cock and shifts his hips, because, _priorities_ – he'd rather not lose his manly-hood to the stranger who saved him then decided to help him as a thank-you gift. He has more dignity than that.

"You are awake." Says a familiar voice, approaching him with feather-light steps from the shadows. Aegon tries to recall where he's heard of that voice before, only to be stopped by the pounding in his head.

"Where am I?" he asks, in Braavosi, as it is expected of him every time someone speaks to him in their language such as his savior.

"The sewers," the voice replies. "Or one of them, at least. The canals of Braavos are tricky bastards." His – or her – accent is a bit off, tilted and awkward, edged with something sharp and disdainful that reminds him of Connington in their ship, ready to sail for the Seven Kingdoms.

There is no doubt in his mind that he will be able to find the ship just fine, maybe, if his head is not so terrible. His savior crouches next to him in the form of a young girl with long face and unkept brown hair, similar to that of a rat, her eyes silver and beautiful even in the barely-there light.

She is beautiful, Aegon thinks, but so young. Younger than him, at least.

"It doesn't smell like a sewer." Says Aegon quickly.

His voice is hoarse and his throat is dry, his tongue a thick traitorous thing in his mouth as it tries to move around the heavy saltiness sticking to the insides of his cheeks, the palate, even down to his trachea.

The little girl doesn't even blink. "Have you been to many sewers then?" and Aegon shakes his head no. The girl takes pity on him but her expression does not waver.

"Braavos has many sewers and canals under the street. You know of that. Most of the sewers are used, some are not. Too far from the residential districts, and all that. This is one of them. It is located near the House of Black and White. You've heard of them."

"I have," Aegon confirms. It is hard not to know of the House of Black and White. The place is like a temple of sorts for the Braavosi. Common people know them as the Guild of Faceless Men. "You have saved me. I owe you. What would you like to have? Anything but my clothes, I fear. My father will not be pleased should he find me robbed of my dignity."

"How so? In Braavos, daring to parade who you are truly with a sword on your hip is a proof of your power. Your pride."

"In Volantis, we do things differently, sweetling. Have you ever been?"

"No," the girl tells him uncertainly. "Is that why your hair so blue? I have heard stories of Volantis. It is a very... colourful city, the sailors said."

"Have you been with a lot of sailors?" he slurs, then winces. That came out wrong. The girl looks no older than fifteen, but it is a probability.

The girl narrows her eyes at him. "Yes," she says, slowly. "But not in a way you may have been thinking of."

"How so?" Aegon asks, so many questions, too many. His head is pounding though, and he feels like he is going to pass out anytime soon if he does not continue talking. Cold slender hand cards through his blue hair, feeling for his forehead, his cheeks. The girl is directly on his line of vision, and Aegon concludes that she is so very beautiful indeed.

Cold hands, cold eyes. They are the colour of Braavosi's sea in the early morning light mixed with the steel of a Valyrian dagger. Her cheekbones are high and sharp, her nose slightly crooked, her lips wet, pressed into a thin line, her neck long and slender like the rest of her.

Aegon would like to have her, bring him back with him to Westeros on his ship, ignoring the ugly scorn Connington would surely shoot their way should he truly do it. He wants to. He can't.

Without his consent, his hand reaches out on their own. To pluck a lock of hair out of her face, maybe, or trace the shape of her face, the curve of her cheekbones, the contour of her lips. Somehow he ends up with his fingers wrapped around her neck, long and slender and smooth, thumb pressing down against her pulse, steady and beating and alive.

Even in the dark, he can see the way her pupils dilate, slightly, when he presses down just a little bit harder, a little bit rougher; the way her breath catches as she moves her hand down his chest to rest her palm on his stomach.

She digs her nails, blunt but ragged, hard into his skin. His cock stirs, at the contact. A woman's touch, he thinks, but if it is a woman's touch that causes it, the brothels would have been fine as well.

"I have never been with anyone if that is what you are insinuating." The girl speaks again, this time in Valyrian, which somehow makes him – unsettled, to know, that she is clever. Smart enough to know two languages, can speak of it although not as fluently as he does. His grip around her neck tightens and her breath hitches as she licks her lips.

This is, obviously, a new territory for him and for her, if her words are to be believed. Aegon is not sure what to feel about that, but his head is so dizzy, and he can't think straight. The stitches make him want to scratch them off, they _itch_ , and his head is so dizzy from the impact of whatever it was that hit him, from drowning in cold salty water for however long.

From the images of things he wants to do to such a young girl who intrigues him with her tilted accent and capability to stitch his wound – there is blood on her clothes, white wool threads sticking to her breeches, the same material, the same colour, as the one used on his wound, he's not _stupid_ or prideful enough not to admit that – and her apparent beauty.

He still can't seem to recall where he had met her before though. It's rather frustrating. It makes his headache worse.

"You should come with me," Aegon slurs through the haze of pain in his head. "I have a ship. We sail for Westeros, for the Seven Kingdoms. I have a lot of friends, they will like you. They won't touch you, not unless you give them your say-so."

He's not sure about the last part, but he will protect her, if he must. So long as she goes with him. "I want to know how you speak two languages. And. And the stitches. And swimming. You save me, you obviously know how to swim."

Everything gets all blurry and buzzing. Aegon wants to close his eyes, but he's afraid if he does, the girl will disappear.

There is a finger pressed against his lips, thin and cold, it belongs to the girl. He wants to do something stupid and childish, like lick it or nip at it, but his body is too worn and his head too painful, and keeping his eyes open is so, so hard.

"Will you come with me?" he tries. It comes out slurred, not making any sense. The girl seems to understand, anyway, she is so smart, Aegon wants to kiss her.

"No," she tells him, back in Braavosi. "I will not. This is my home. I like it here."

"Oh," says Aegon, crushed and disappointed, the weight of it making him more tired and sleepy. "That's too bad. I really like you. You save my life and I owe you one. Will you tell me your name at least?"

"No one," the girl replies easily. "I am no one. Rest. I will return you to the Happy Port. Valar dohaeris."

"All men must serve." Aegon agrees, then rests.

-

The next time he wakes up, he is clad in nothing but his breeches; two whores in his arms, their legs tangled with his, and Duck grinning broadly from where he is leaning against the door.

"Good night?" he teases, soft and playful, as to not wake the sleeping whores around him.

"Rough night, more like." Aegon mumbles back, and Duck laughs, low and amused.

"Get dressed, young dragon." Duck says. "We sail for Westeros today. Wouldn't want to keep your dear father waiting."

From this angle, Duck cannot see the stitches on his arm, covered nicely between the woman's perky breasts with her arm stretches across his chest. It still itches. And there is a crescent mark, the shape of the girl's nails, from where she had dug them into his flesh. He doesn't tell Duck any of this.

Aegon nods and does as he's told.

-

He doesn't forget, about the girl who saved his life, the one with silver eyes and long face, long after they've sailed atop the _Shy Maid_.

Neither does she.

-

**Author's Note:**

> this line:
> 
> "The best whores are at the Happy Port, down by where the mummers' Ship is moored." The girl who sells oysters had informed them with practised ease. "Ask for Merry. Meralyn is her true name, but everyone calls her Merry, and she is." Duck had laughed, and the girl had added, her face a mask of innocence, "That and the biggest pair of teats in all of Braavos."
> 
> the dialogue is from affc pg. 727-728. kudos for me for remembering! ;)


End file.
